I was unable to get into the Cataclysm Beta which meant that I couldn't really post anything interesting for the last few months.
However, I am now on the PTR testing shiz out.
Hunter pets scale in Cataclysm baby!
Here is the current basic scaling:
Ferocity (damage) -- 50% of master's AP, 40% health, 50% armor
Tenacity (tanking) -- 50% of master's AP, 50% health, 70% armor
Cunning (utility) -- 50% of master's AP, 40% health, 60% armor
Now the real interesting stuff that I found out on the PTR:
We all know that Hunter pets have scaled fully with the Hunters Hit and Resilience stats.
Hunter CRIT is now fully scaling with Hunter pets!!! This is what it means with a 5 minute test for each pet:
Now, my Cunning Serpent pet did the least damage because it only received 40% of my AP and did not have the Ferocity talents that boost crit chance and the Rabid talent.
The Devilsaur did so well because it scales better with attack power (50%) and it receives the 9% crit in Ferocity along with Rabid. But the reason why a Devilsaur is better than a Core Hound in solo play is because it now bring along a 5% crit buff like the Feral Druid buff. The thing is it buffs itself with the 5% extra crit and then buffs me with the 5% extra crit which in turn fully scales with my pet. So my pet actually receives 10% crit buff from the Devilsaur buff!
Now this pet double scaling was the reason why pets were under performing in solo play but were extremely good when the Hunter had full buffs in Wrath. In Cataclysm pets cannot be buffed by others but since the Devilsaur buff is not from others it bypasses that restriction. I'm guessing this will eventually change, as I only have 45% crit and my Devilsaur has 65% crit (45% from me, 10% from its 5% crit buff, 9% from Ferocity talent tree).
But dang, I will not miss the days of 5% base pet crit chance, 10% pet crit chance from BM talents and 9% crit chance from Ferocity pet talents in a world with resilience negating 15% of the 24% (9% crit chance against Resilience targets). And that left the Cunning tree out of the equation in PvP as BM, since your pet being unable to crit would make the Frenzy and Ferocious Inspiration talents worthless.
But I digress... Cataclysm will finally fix the pet scaling issue for good. Full scaling with the Hunter Crit %. Amazing.
